What's your worst internship experience?

Never had one.

I went straight into the fire.

I have worked with a lot of interns, I'm not sure it did much good for many of them. Some of them though did well, even got a job.

Many years ago, a big part of my internship was to devise a software tool to compare the electrical performances of various copper technologies the company I was working for made and compare it to competitor's, then analyse the results out of it and make a report. I had to redo the work of previous engineers because they all got laid off.

The company was pushing me to complete the report because they needed it to make big R&D decisions, whether the products were behind or leading the markets on average.

When my supervisor and I presented my analysis and conclusion to the VP of engineering along with some execs, it included a lot of alarming news, which were really important to hear.

The VP of engineering proceeded to fall asleep in his chair 10 minutes into the presentation. I asked my supervisor what to do and he woke him up, being a bit shaken. Then, the VP just left the meeting without hearing the rest of the presentation.

@PepeTheFrog is that really a bad experience? I'd consider that just funny.

@electrineer felt bad at first, but yeah pretty funny. Worst VP ever.

I got my first internship on a bit of a blag. Day 1 I turn up and realise I am utterly put of my depth.

Boss says "you have 3 weeks to become a full stack dev".

I had only done basic control flow at that point. Hardly has any knowledge of IT in general.

That whole year was the best thing for me, but fuck it was hard.

Not your typical story because I'm not the intern.

Intern starts with us with zero experience professionally (never even held a job). They had lots of personal experience and actually made it through the interviews. They were around 20.

The intern could figure out technical issues pretty well, but their personality was shit. Zero professionalism, and absolutely refused to listen to instruction.

Fast forward to day 85, review day. This dumbass came to review with notes of how we failed and why we needed them. Notes came complete with an acceptable yearly salary of $120,000.

I couldn't contain my laughter. So the review goes on, I lay into this jackass -- hard. I bring up evidence of insubordination, failure to complete tasks on time, quality of work is lacking, etc. By the end of it this kid is glowing red!

Calls me an idiot and that I'm too incompetent to understand how dumb I really am.

I signed his timesheet for the internship, but totally ratted him out to his dept head.

@sariel
Wow, you really sound like the asshole your intern described.
Maybe listen when someone flags issues, hadn't properly been introduced to the tasks and tools or resources are rotten; as a fairly paid intern.

Then 'ratting someone out'.. Why so salty, if the funny guy had a calculation for the demanded salary?
I for instance had quite some suggestions that would save hundreds of thousands in just one year, which I of course calculated into my claims to a fair fraction (1/3rd).
The employer did not listen and lost those hundreds of thousands. And still does, and even am no longer with that company.
Which I can prove, as they still haven't deactivated my accounts. Poor fools.

@scor wow your sound just as entitled as they did.

This intern didn't provide any extra value that a contractor would provide, so why would I waste 120k a year on someone I can actually train for 30-50k?

They refused to listen to instruction, failed to deliver on time, brought the productivity average for the team down.

Top it off with telling someone who's been working in the same team for over 5 years they are incompetent and unable to comprehend how stupid they are?

They're lucky I signed their shit in the end. If I was petty and an asshole I would have refused.

Sometimes children need to be told no so they are aware of boundaries. That day they learned what not to do during a review.

Last I heard they have hopped through 7 other employers and just keeps getting fired. Eventually they'll learn.

@scor

In my experience most interns aren't worth much, many even less than they are paid.

Internships to me are largely offered as just being a good member of the community. Outside some unicorn interns... they're not with much.

And that's ok, I loved working with interns, their value isn't really the point.

If an intern isn't professional or etc, the time for them to hear it is at that internship .... better they hear it early than later.

Asking as a weekly rant topic?

I started my IT career 'officially' by writing command and control software for an internet cafe contracting for fish, chips and a 600ml coke (not f***ing diet either) for the following year, i wrote it in vb6 for ease and the total dev time was about12 to 18 hpurs (prolly quite slow really) for work station lock and unlock, launch browser @ specific address and display timer/charge on workstations, i was then offered a traineeship by the computer stote behind and because of my country regulation(austfailia) on taking all acceptable work or face no income support i could not refuse, i was paid 5.90 for the following year